I want
to stop time.
I want to park it on
a swing and re-arc
the same pie of sky
until I’ve had
my fill.
I don’t want
you to die.
Or me.
And I want to live all the many moments
this single one can be
again and again
until I get it
right.

****************************Aha! It is May and a new poem (or draft poem) occurred to me last night. I may link this to Real Toads as the poem turned out, on first write, to be exactly 55 words (and it happens to be a Flash 55 day.) Or maybe I’ll come up with another! Who knows? (Freedom from compulsion–meaning the fact that my commitment to April is over and I can write as many poems a day as I wish –or not–is its own inspiration!) Have a good weekend.

You sound, to my flat-tired mind,
like Jello,
and I try to gather
some bounce from that,
a vision of myself
as a stainless steel spoon tapping
an uncracked ruby sheen,

and I try to look through
that rubyiat lens
as I say hello
to aloneness
(he goes and I
do not)
but Jello
is a rather artificial
construct
that I long ago omitted
from life, and I can’t quite come up
with faked cheer either,
so I don’t say goodbye
gracefully
and past hellos sound,
as they echo,
hollow,
though the burn behind my eyes
feels real enough–
It is not red;
it is not shiny;
it does not bounce.

And how is it, I wonder,
that love can fold in upon itself
so sharply,
when all it wants
is to lie like two hellos
in soft sequence, each fitting
the other’s hollows as flesh
pillows bone, as if we were each made
of whispered vowels, consonants,
as if we could be held
by a word.

*******************

Another super drafty poem. Still away from home, and not thinking so clearly! Am posting for With Real Toads Open Forum. The pic is an older one– sorry for any lateness in returning comments.

Also, I’ve not made a pitch in a long time, but here’s one–check out if you have a chance my books! Serious novel–Nice— Comic novel, NOSE DIVE, book of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book 1 MISSISSIPPI.

Also, I want to express deep gratitude to Marian Kent of Runaway Sentence for her very kind review of Nice on Amazon. I am too shy/embarrassed to ever check my books on Amazon and so did not see the review until just now. Thank you so much, Marian.

You caress the other’s face,
making love, but some curve
of your knuckle, back
of your hand,
brushes your own eyelid, and
you can’t tell, for an instant, what
has touched you
where–whether hand or eye
felt that stroke, and whose hand,
and whose eye–
remembering too can be
like that,
with luck, time.

************************

Here are 55 (minus title) that I hope are not too enigmatic for Marian’s Flash 55 prompt on With Real Toads. This poem has been edited since posting so maybe is a bit less enigmatic now. (The earlier version relied on the title more and just referred to remembering as “it” in the poem).

I appreciate that the photo doesn’t exactly match the poem! And that it probably is too “short,” cutting off trees. But I took it in my visually-impaired way the other day in upstate New York, and I very much like the crinkled ice at the bottom, the freeze happening on a windy night.

Words heard
as themselves,
words that sound out
what they mean–
I’m not speaking about just
“banging”
(siss boom bah),
but, for example, “bound,”
as in leaping bouncily,
or “bound” as in
tied ’round,
or “bound”–aimed
from lost to found,
or “bound”-as in you
clasped by me
and me
locked into
you.

Or take, for another, “missive,”
as inside the envelope we make
of each other
(addressed to “dearest”, sealed
with a loving kiss),
or, for example, “missive,”
which when one of us must leave
is all we have, meaning,
like this poem,
“missive.”

*******************************

A draft poem of sorts for my husband. (Pic also by me, taken in Washington, DC by C&O Canal, all rights reserved.)